UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI PISA
Dipartimento di Filologia, Letteratura e Linguistica
Corso di Laura Magistrale in
LETTERATURE E FILOLOGIE EURO-AMERICANE
Tesi di Laurea
Identity Formation of Chinese Canadian Women in
Sky Lee’s Disappearing Moon Cafe
RELATORE: CANDIDATO:
Prof.ssa Biancamaria Rizzardi Siyi Zhu
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Identity Formation of Chinese Canadian Women in
Sky Lee’s Disappearing Moon Cafe
Table of Contents
I. Introduction ... 1
1.1 Breaking New Ground— the Rising of Chinese Canadian Literature ... 1
1.2 Sky Lee and Disappearing Moon Cafe ... 3
1.3 Literature Review ... 6
II. Marginalized Identity of ChineseCanadian Women in Disappearing Moon Cafe ... 11
2.1 Cultural Identity ... 12
2.1.1 Heavily Inherited by Chinese Traditional Cultures – Immigration Ancestors ... 13
2.1.2 Influenced by Mainstream Canadian Cultures —Young Generation ... 18
2.1.3 Collision between the Two Cultures ... 20
2.2 Gender Identity ... 24
2.2.1 Women in Feudal Society in China ... 26
2.2.2 Women in Capitalist Society in the Western World ... 32
2.2.3 The Other in Both Chinese and Western Male Authority ... 37
III. Identity Formation of Chinese Canadian Women ... 44
3.1 Cultural Identity Formation ... 44
3.1.1 The Rediscovery of ChineseCanadian History ... 45
3.1.2 Rebellion against the Stereotypes ... 54
3.1.3 The Construction of Hybrid Cultural Identity ... 61
3.2 Gender Identity Formation ... 67
3.2.1 Political Rights, Financial Independence and Education ... 67
3.2.2 The Awareness of Feminist Consciousness ... 74
3.2.3 Breaking the Silence through Discourses ... 78
IV. Conclusion ... 84
Bibliography ... 86
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Identity Formation of Chinese Canadian Women in
Sky Lee’s Disappearing Moon Cafe
Abstract
Sky Lee is one of ethnic writers who dare to challenge the long-run silence of marginalized group, by the means of writing in English about historical experience of her community. Her book, Disappearing Moon Cafe which was published in Vancouver in 1990, immediately caught the public attention and won the City of Vancouver Book Award while being nominated the Governor General’s Literary Award. Lee, as a female writer, cares very much about females’ struggle for identity from one generation to the next.
With the influence of postcolonialism and women’s movements, identity became more and more concerned by the minority groups. Postcolonialists hold that women from the Third World countries are under the dual oppressions. On the one hand, they are subjected to racial and cultural discrimination under Euro-American dominated society; on the other hand, they suffer from gender prejudice in both white hegemony and patriarchal doctrines. For more than one century of racial discrimination and segregation, Chinese Canadians have been on the brink of mainstream society. Whereas the females have a crueler condition as they are the victims of being marginalized from racism and gender prejudice simultaneously. In Disappearing Moon Cafe, all female characters have suffered self-loss to some extent. Therefore, how to construct its own identity becomes an urgent problem that needs to be solved.
This thesis will introduce the living conditions of Chinese Canadian women and the identity crisis they encounter by the means of rereading the novel Disappearing
Moon Cafe. Based on the theories of postcolonialism, feminism and other identity
theories, this thesis will conduct a multi-dimensional study on the self-identification of Chinese Canadian women through the in-depth analysis and study of the novel
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Disappearing Moon Cafe. Mainly divided into two parts, it focuses on how Chinese
Canadian women form their own identities in terms of cultural and gender perspectives. First of all, being aware of the conditions they are in, Chinese Canadians have to trace back to their origin and gain power from their own profound traditional culture while challenging and resisting the cultural hegemony in Canadian society. They should rediscover the silent history of its own ethnic culture and aware the great contribution the ancestors made to the development of Canada. Canadian born ethnic Chinese are easy to get confused for self-identity as they are not accepted by white race on account of physical appearance while being considered as not pure Chinese at the same time. Thus, they have to find a comfort in the marginalized state and establish the unique hybrid culture. Secondly, the prejudice toward females demands for a solution. This thesis summarizes three necessary approaches for the establishment of female identity by analyzing the image of women in Disappearing Moon Cafe: gaining for political, vocational and educative rights while awakening of female consciousness as well as breaking silence through female discourse.
Nowadays, equality between races and sexuality is becoming increasingly important. While marginalized groups are receiving more attention in literature field, it is of great historical and practical significance to study the Chinese Canadian women’s experiences in the mainstream culture of Canada while to explore their identity formation in both cultural and sexual perspective.
Key Words: Sky Lee, Disappearing Moon Cafe, Canadian Chinese women, culture, gender, identity formation.
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I. Introduction
1.1 Breaking New Ground— the Rising of Chinese
Canadian Literature
Historically, Chinese have settled in Canada for a hundred and fifty-eight years. Most of the early arrivals were hired by the local government for public construction service and the other Chinese came to Canada, searching for hopes and dreams in this new land. However, when the Chinese first arrived in Canada, they suddenly became radically separatists when faced with a radically divisive environment. Unanticipated, for about one hundred years, Chinese as ‘alien’ were treated as an undesirable race and lived under a difficult condition. While the contributions made by Chinese ancestors were not recognized for centuries and from the moment that the railway was completed, Canada turned its back on them. Beginning with the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885, a head tax was imposed on Chinese newcomers while Europeans were offered free land as an incentive to immigrate to Canada. In 1923, the government went further and adopted the Exclusion Act, which outright prohibited Chinese immigration into Canada. All those made Chinese in a marginalized plight in Canadian society.
Minimizing interaction with “ghosts”/outsider, they formed large, protective and self-sufficient economic and cultural enclaves called Chinatown. For many decades, Chinese were confined in Chinatowns and had absolutely no access to the mainstream media. They were collectively silenced. However, from the 1970s with the rise of Women’s Movement and Postcolonialism, Chinese like other minority groups started to break through the wall of alienation and isolation. A group of native born Chinese Canadians in Vancouver together with Japanese Canadians organized Asian Writer’s Workshop and published the ground-breaking anthology
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wild fire, the first generation of Chinese Canadian writers emerged from the Writers’ Workshop. Those Chinese Canadian Literature pioneer-authors usually were local born who receive fine education, excelled in English. Grown up in the totally different cultures--Western culture (external environment) and Chinese culture (internal environment-family affected), they tempered and kept two cultures in a good balance.
Their collective voice brought out a largely unrecorded Chinese Canadian experience and heritage that had been excluded or misrepresented by the dominant media. In various literary forms, writers from the community started to redress the historical injustice, to deal with issues of Chinese Canadian history and confront racism of past and present. From many years, the Chinese Canadian writers had created excellent works in all genres and forms. For example, Jim Wong-Chu’s poetry collection Chinatown Ghosts (1986); Winston Christopher Kam’s play Bachelor-Man (1985) which was stages by Theatre Passe Muraille in 1987; Fred Wah’s Waiting For
Saskachenwan(1989) which won the 1985 Governor General’s Literary for poetry;
Evelyn Lau’s Memoirs Runaway：Diary of A Street Kid (1989); Sky Lee’s novel
Disappearing Moon Cafe(1990) which will be analyzed as the topic of my thesis.
Chinese Canadian Literature is community based and is characterized by the historical experience of the community; consistent literary tropes and expressions have been developed to reclaim the collective community history and to redefine a collectively shared Chinese Canadian Identity (Lien, 1997).
Nonetheless, at that time, Chinese Canadian Literature was still out of mainstream’s attention. But thanks to Canadian state composition, migration played a great part in Canada. The public emphasized on the social importance of immigration, the Canadian federal government had been described as the instigator of multiculturalism as its ideology. Finally, during the 1970s and 1980s, a policy of multiculturalism was officially adopted by the Government of Canada under Pierre Trudeau (Kobayashi, 1993). This official policy of multiculturalism had significant impact on the way Canadian literature was read and defined. However, after years of hard work, a shifting social and political landscape meant that Canada’s body of
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national literature was also developing and transforming.
In fact, like Roma was not built in a day, it needs years to put theories into practice. Lien Chao used to lament in her book at the end of 20th century: “nonwhite immigrant writings have not been absorbed into the Canadian literary cannon (Lieu, 1994, p337).” The justification for this apparent absence is the writings from the white, middleclass, heterosexual, malestream perspective actually speaks for all. “European immigrants’ experiences have been read as universal.” (Lieu, 1994, p337) Fortunately, an anthology of essays that explores the shifting theoretical framework of Canadian literary studies --Trans.Can.Lit: Resituating the Study of Canadian
Literature (2007) was published at the beginning of 21st century. As many of the authors in the anthology argue that the transformation indeed included a new space for diasporic or immigrant literatures such as Chinese Canadian writing.
With the self-quality enhancement and years of execution of multiculturalism, Chinese Canadian literature, along with other Canadian minority literary genres, has flourished.
1.2 Sky Lee and Disappearing Moon Cafe
Sky Lee (1952- ) is one of the most representative female Chinese Canadian writers in the late 20th century. Lee came from an underprivileged family as her mother Wong Mowe Oi was a homemaker and her father Lee Gwei Chang (the same given name as the patriarch in Disappearing Moon Cafe) was a millwork. Born and grew up at Port Alberni, British Columbia and later she moved to Vancouver in 1967 where she received BA in fine arts from the University of British Columbia. Lee also received a diploma in nursing from Douglas College. Now she settled in Salt Spring Island, BC.
In the late 1960s, along with “radicalized friends who were well-educated and progressive second and third generation Chinese Canadians”, Lee participated in an emerging “Asian Canadian Identity Movement” that “work(s) hard to chronicle the
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Chinese Canadian history of struggle against marginalization and disenfranchisement” (Lee, 1993). It is in the historical research that she found lots of historical details that inspired her of some plots in her novels. For example, she braided the storyline on the base of the historical events that from 1890 and 1930s: many people were sent to search for bones from those who died in the construction of Canadian railways and brought them back to China. It became the prologue of Disappearing Moon Cafe which naturally brought Wong Gwei Chang in front of readers.
Later, along with Paul Yee (children’s author), Jim Wong-Chu (poet), Sean Gunn (poet) and Rick Shiomi (playwright), Lee founded the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop (ACWW) which evolved from a small collective to a non-profit organization. It was created out of a need to foster a community of writers and build literature while to develop and nurture Pacific Rim Asian writers. In 1995, ACWW was incorporated as a non-profit society which started publishing Ricepaper Magazine, originally as a newsletter to showcase the work of emerging Asian Canadian writers. It is now a nationally recognized web-based magazine with a global audience.1
Before the title of a novelist, Lee was known as an illustrator for Paul Yee’s Teach
Me to Fly, Skyfighter! (1983)- -a collection consists of 4 children stories. A part of the
Canadian Adventure Series, the book focuses on a group of Chinese-Canadian children attending a multi-ethnic school in Vancouver. Her illustrations were also featured in the landmark anthology Inalienable Rice (1979).
In 1990, Lee published her first novel Disappearing Moon Cafe in Vancouver and aroused immediate public attention. The novel is generally considered her master piece and was nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize as well as the Governor General’s Literary Award the pre-eminent literary prize in Canada and finally won the City of Vancouver Book Award. It was the first contemporary Chinese Canadian novel that had caught mainstream critical attention.
Later in the same year, Lee contributed to Telling It: Women and Language
across Culture (1990) together with Betsy Warland, Daphne Marlatt, Lee Maracle and
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others. It is a collection of dialogues and writings based on an important 1988 feminist conference that purposed “to showcase the writing and thought of women who are marginalized in different ways… It featured women writers and performers from the Native Indian, Asian- Canadian and lesbian communities in B.C (Lee S, Lee M, Marlatt& Warland, 1990, pp.12).”
In 1994, Lee published Bellydancer: Stories, a collection of 15 short stories that examine a range of feminist themes with allegories focusing primarily on the “bellydancer”, an archetype of survival. The focus and message of this text contributed to Lee's critical designation as a "feminist writer”. Lee’ is also a short story writer as she appeared in various venues, like Vancouver Short Stories as well as periodicals such as West Coast Line, The Asianadian, Kinethis and Makara, giving voices to experiences and perspectives that Lee and her people were largely absent, in English-language Canadian writing.
However, among all her works, Disappearing Moon Cafe aroused the highest public attention as it laid down a cornerstone for Chinese Canadian Literature. It was the first book that leads me to get to know how this new field and how my compatriot used to survive far away from motherland. The book got two nominations and finally won the 1990 City of Vancouver Book Award. The genealogy2 in the front page of the novel helps us to recognise all the characters and set the keynote of the book. The book traces Wong family’s struggle in Canada from 1890s to 1980s.
Lee said that when Disappearing Moon Cafe was conceived, she was working within a social cultural context whose sexist and racist politics led her to believe that she would always be a cultural outsider to Canadian art or anything else she would attempt to do. She had grown used to this belief, especially since generation of her people had also operated under this assumption. “I was marginalized, excluded from the centre of dominant cultural norms (Lee, 1993)”. Just as Sky lee’s favorite writer, Itabari Njeri used to lament: “so institutionalized is the ignorance of our history, our
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culture, our everyday existence that, often, we do not even know ourselves (Hooks, 1990, pp.172)”.
A lot of histories were buried underground. Sky Lee like other pioneer ethnic writers in order to reveal the unknown history and focuses more on the experience of Chinese immigrants and the real life of ethnic Chinese. The book is not all fictional as there it is based on historical background. The novel has alluded to many events that happened in Chinese-Canadian history within one and a half century through the whole novel. For instance, in 19th century, millions of Chinese railway workers suffered from tough environment and were treated inhumanely; the release of head tax and 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act restrain the entry of Chinese people and many families cannot be reunited. It helps to give rich personality characteristics, and shape the characters in a more objective view.
Different from the classical linear structure, the book uses a substantial space-time wear jump description from the present to past, past to present and past to past. Reading this novel is like do the puzzle as the novel is neither narrated in terms of character nor in chronological order. All the characters appeared alternately in their corresponding time and narrate their own stories in a simple way on a personal level, which leads readers to piece every single puzzle to a whole map.
Furthermore, the text is ladened with distinct ethnic flavor, peppery Chinese colloquialism, coarse peasanty vulgarities and rustic in-jokes. It may be sound odd and startle to readers from other countries in reading some traditions and customs.
1.3 Literature Review
Sky Lee’s Disappearing Moon Cafe has caught many public attentions since its publication. As a result, many critics have put their view on it in different fields. Some scholars explore the identity issue represented in the novel, some concentrates on relationship of mother-daughter, some are interests Lee’s depiction of Chinese Canadian history mentioned in the novel, some take a further study of image of
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Bones, etc. It is impossible to demonstrate all, so the following all be mainly focus on issues of identity, which is the main theme of this thesis.
As most of the immigrants, like Chinese Canadians in Lee’s novel, have the same feeling of “double bind” just like Paul Yee (1988) declaims. They feel alienated from both cultures. On the one hand, Canadian mainstream culture holds a negative attitude towards Chinese culture and calls Chinese “yellow peril”, “chinaman”, “chink”, etc; on the other hand, they have never been accepted by Chinese for their Canadianized way of thinking and behaving. Such kind of marginalized state has brought them confusions about their identities.
The confusion of culture belongings urges Chinese Canadians to establish their unique culture in order to own their own identity. Pan (1995) points out that it is time that Chinese Canadians invent their own images and tell their stories in English in order to catch on with a wider audience. It is their mission to break through the historical silence by reclaiming their community history and individual identities. Romell (1990) focuses on the best way to construct the cultural identity of Chinese Canadians through looking back to Chinese roots while accepting the Canadian ideology—constructing a culture hybridity. It is of great significance that Chinese Canadians becomes aware of their own culture and sensibilities so that they have something to be proud of. This is considered highly important since some Chinese immigrants seem to have already internalized the prejudices, rejections and racial stereotypes they were forced to encounter in Canada and therefore start to believe they are inferior and have no culture integrity as Chinese Canadians.
Apart from the culture identity, gender identity is another important issue in this thesis. Nancy Walker (1992) investigates that compared with male counterparts, Chinese Canadian women suffer more layers of silencing. Caught in a double bondage, they have been simultaneously silenced by the male-dominated society and occidental world. They refuse to capitulate to the ever-present obstacles and have been struggling to form their own identity by laying claim to their own voices. They gradually aware the conflicts of dichotomy between the Orient and Occident, the obstacles caused by patriarchy and the conflicts between mainstream and
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marginalized cultures are the barriers of their self--formation. With the development of feminist movement, they began to reconstruct on their gender identity.
According to Evelyn Lau (1989), women of financial and spirit independence have proved that Chinese women have been playing a key role in the survival and prosperity of the Chinese community since the beginning of the Chinese immigration to Canada. Their successes will courage more Chinese Canadian women to have a consciousness of independence, to redefine their roles in family and society and to seek for their own identity. Beverly (1992) takes the view that women should try to challenge the patriarchy system in order to form their identity. It is important to be out of the mental ghettos and become more confident about themselves if they want to become as independent as men. Then they should be more active in the political affairs and involves in more professions so that they can militate against racial discrimination and gender oppression.
Some critics also accuse Lee of faking traditional Chinese customs to simply resurrect racist images of an inscrutable East. For example, Lien Chao (1997) criticizes that China and Chinese Canadians portrayed in Lee’s novel are the products of white racist imagination, not fact, not real Chinese Culture. Hoerder (2000) points out that Lee’s work aims to cater to the white superstition, which has made Chinese fall into the victims of Oriental discourse.
Theoretical Background
In order to make a better interpretation of the novel, this thesis will mainly employ theories of postcolonialism and feminism for reference. Postcolonialism is not necessarily only for colonization but also speaks for the Third World Countries, ethnic groups as well as other marginalized groups. Feminism aims to search for quality and liberate women from the male-dominant world. Both of these two theories targets at oppressed groups who are powerless, exploited and have a subordinate position in the society, which makes them perfect for my thesis.
First of all, in postcolonialism, Edward Said’s concept of the Other and Homi Bhabha’s concept of Ambivalance, Mimicry, Hybridity as well as his Third Space
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theory are mentioned for the section of culture identity and its possible solutions to culture identity formation.
Edward Said as the most representative forerunners of postcolonialism, states the critique of western representations of the eastern culture in Orientalism, which is the cornerstone of postcolonial canon. Orientalism is a Western style for Orientalizing the Orient. “Orientalism regards Eastern culture as fixed and changeless, incapable of defining self. This stereotyped view established for the westerners a sense of cultural and intellectual superiority.” (Said, 1978, pp.1) He put forward the notion of Other and Self to describe the relation of the Orient and the Occident. The Self (Occident) is privileged and has upper hand to define, reconstruct the passive, silent and weak Other (Orient). The Orient helps to define the West as its contrasting image, idea, personality and experience.
Bhabha put forward a series of conception. Ambivalence is the mixed and conflicting feelings that a marginalized person must have. Many immigrant people feel ambivalent about their original cultural at first, then they tend to mimic natives’ behaviors in the new environment. Mimicry is the first step to conduct cultural translation. The first step for cultural translation is colonial Mimicry—“the desire for a reformed, recognized Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite.”(Bhabha, 1994, pp.86) Many colonized people try to fix the identity crisis by only imitating the whites and fail in the end. They only reach the level of “almost the same” but not quite the same. Imitation fails to help them get rid of the cultural dilemma, because it is far from enough. As they are stand in the Third Space, they must accept culture hybridity. It is a condition, in which people create new principles to adjust new sites in order to participate in new sites fully and productively. According to Bhabha, if the Other wants to construct his identity, he should be hybrids or he should be in the status of hybridity, which is achieved through the Third Space. The Third Space is the space of “neither the One nor the Other”, but the “in-between space”. The process of Cultural hybridity gives a new area of negotiation described as an “in-between designation of identity.”(Bhabha, 1994, pp.4)
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In regard to gender identity, the three waves of Women’s Movements are mentioned together with the analysis of female characters in the novel. The first wave began in the 1830s and focus mainly on women’s suffrage. During this time, women were still regarded by society as the property of their father or husband. Women recognized that to gain social status, they must gain some level of political power. The second wave feminism began right after World War II. It focused mainly on sexuality, the workplace and reproductive rights (Wilber,2017). The third wave focused on embracing individualism and diversity. But it was also seen as both a continuation of the second wave and a response to the perceived failures.
Along with the waves of Women’s Movement, many feminist theorists are illustrated. Just like Simone de Beauvoir’s famous quote that “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (Beauvoir, 1949), women are not born subordinate to men, it was caused by the social rules made by the human being. The potentates in the male-dominant society defend the history, reality, institutions and ideology for women. They only empower women with certain qualities—chaotic emotions, uncontrollable sexual desire, passive, delicate and etc to marginalize women. Just like Mary Wollstonecraft presents in her book that there was no difference between the sexes in intelligence and ability. Both feminists call for freedom and independence for women. “What woman needs first of all is to undertake, in anguish and pride, her apprenticeship in abandonment and transcendence: that is, in liberty” (Beauvoir, 1949, pp.711).
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II. Marginalized Identity of Chinese-Canadian
Women in Disappearing Moon Cafe
Identity, “can be regarded a theory of self that is formed and maintained through actual or imagined interpersonal agreement about what the self is like (Schlenker & Weigold, 1989, pp.245). ” Identity is shaped by social structures as class, race, culture, language, value etc. Therefore it can be classified into various categories according to the different views, including gender identity, age identity, racial identity, ethnic identity, class identity, regional identity, personal identity and etc.(Martin, 1995)
Identity is always a big concern for ethnic writers, especially for who have the background of being emigrated from the Third World. Confronted by the dominating Euro-American culture and racism, they inevitably have to face a series of questions about identity like, who am I? How to identify myself? How to deal with the self-ethnicity and otherness?
Being in a unique group as ethnic minority writers are, they are more sensitive to culture and feel more strongly about the marginalization and other status of themselves and their entire ethnic groups in mainstream society and culture. Therefore, they always pay attention to their own ethnic living conditions in the two cultures with their unique life experiences and dual cultural perspectives in literature creation, and the resulting thinking on identity issues.
Furthermore, females in ethnic minority usually bear the pressure of double marginalities imposed from racial and sexual discrimination. They are excluded from the world of White and the world of Male.
This chapter will place emphasis on the analysis of social identity of Chinese Canadian women from the perspective of culture and gender on the basis of book analysis of the novel Disappearing Moon Cafe.
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2.1 Cultural Identity
Cultural identity refers to a person's sense of belonging to a particular culture or group. This process involves learning about and accepting traditions, heritage, language, religion, ancestry, aesthetics, thinking patterns, and social structures of a culture. Normally, people internalize the beliefs, values, norms, and social practices of their culture and identify themselves with that culture. The culture becomes a part of their self-concept (Lustig, 2013).
Myron Lustig notes that cultural identities are central to a person’s sense of self. That is because cultural identities “are central, dynamic, and multifaceted components of one’s self concept.” (2013, pp.133) Indeed, just like Lustig said that cultural identity is a dynamic thing and exists within a changing social context. It is usually shaped by the people within culture and surroundings to better understand our world. At a young age, people create a mold of our cultural identity through the ideas of our parents by adopting a majority of their beliefs. But as we grow older the different people we come in contact with from different cultures (where it be religious, nationality, class, gender, ethnicity etc.) help us to shape our cultural identity mold as easily as play-do as we adopt different identities in hopes to understand and learn from these different cultures or outright object them. In a word, a person’s identity changes with one’s ongoing experiences in life.
Generally speaking, the immigrant groups usually have a high possibility of fluctuation and development of cultural identity and a process of acculturation. It is easy to get lost if not treated properly. For example, if the first generation immigrants, who were deeply influenced by the Chinese cultures, refused to accept their new identity, then they will fall into identity crisis. Another example will be the so-called tusheng (local born), who usually suffers from a period of identity loss. They remain culturally marginal, feeling that they do not belong to either culture. Most of the characters in Disappearing Moon Cafe are in this dilemma. The children of the first and second generation immigrants consider them as Canadian as they are born and brought up in Canada. However, all the others deny their Canada identites on
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account of their Asiatic appearance. Back to the Chinese community, they are again refused because of their unfamiliarity with the authentic Chinese culture and customs. Just as Gee Joyce said, “I feel very inferior among both groups and I feared that if I choose one group, then I will be rejected by the other group” (Joyce, 1982, pp.117).
2.1.1 Heavily Inherited by Chinese Traditional Cultures
–- Immigration Ancestors
The common interpretation of Asian immigration to Canada traced back to the 19th century to search for better life and new dreams. Some came for the famous ‘Gold Rush’ and some were hired as the cheap labour builders for railroad building. For some reasons (illustrate in Chapter later) those workers could not be back home even after their missions were completed. As a result, they settled down and search for their ways of living and eventually they became the so-called first generation of immigration in Canada.
The first or second generation immigrants usually consider themselves as Chinese as most of them were born in China. Been brought up in the Chinese traditional families and educated by the traditional values and customs from childhood make them somewhat “stubborn”. Mui Lan, in her mind, everything is inferior to domestic, even compatriots in the Chinatown: men do not keep filial piety while women haven’t followed the traditional Doctrine of Women. Fong Mei keeps thinking of her hometown, she kept in touch with her elder sister through letters for all those years, telling her about the struggles, joys, pains, and thrills. She wrote to her elder sister:
Now, I wouldn’t be able to claw my way her as a beggar. I’m lost among strangers, with ‘no road and no destination.’ There’s no one to turn to, and I think of home constantly. I’ve forgotten why I ever wanted to come to this forsaken place… (53)
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Even after many years, Fong Mei still dreams of leaving the backward country of Canada, with the wealth she has made here, and she sends her two eldest children to Hong Kong in preparation for their triumphant return to China: "What was the use of all her money if she couldn't get back to civilization? (164)" She asks herself. A sense of reverse cultural superiority becomes a means of resisting state hegemony, but it also implies a faith in an "authentic" Chinese culture lying across the Pacific.
The traditional Chinese ideology is, in some certain way, far from the western one. It is based on Confucianism, which demands a strict requirement for one’s behave. It would be very hard to accept a new ideology from an already established concept of value. In the novel, we see the origin crime that lead to the consequent problems actually came from the obsession of pure Chinese blood, which resulted in Gwei Chang's eventual betrayal of Indian-origin girl Kelora for marrying a "genuine Chinese woman" back in China. Gwei Chang had a blind marriage with Mui Lan. In the past time, marriages were usually arranged by parents as in feudal ideology, filial piety was the foundation of all virtues. The youngster respected and listened to what the elder said. It was common that the bridegroom and bridge hadn’t seen each other until the day of wedding. The second generation—Choy Fuk and Fong Mei also married in this way.
However, Fong Mei was “unlucky” as she had a “tyrant” mother-in- law. The biggest causation of disharmony between these two women was all about the continuity of family line. Mencius, one of the representatives of Confucianism, says that there are three major offenses against filial piety: do not support parents when they are alive, do not give them a decent Burial upon their death, and do not produce an heir, the last of which is the gravest offense.3 Thus, to continue the family bloodline is one of life's most important things for the old-traditional Chinese. In this context, we may understand Mui Lan’s eagerness to have a grandchild and her “crazy” plan to borrow the waitress’ belly to deliver a child for Wong Family. “She wanted a grandson to fulfill the most fundamental purpose to her life (38)”. It would
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be her fault to choose a daughter-in-law that cannot continue the bloodline of Wong Family. Mui Lan considered babies as prosperity, and every time she saw a baby she can’t help herself showing the greedy look. She had been counting the days for the coming of her grandson, but five years, three months and eighteen days, there was still no good news.
The early immigrants lived in a tough situation, being treated as an unwanted race and suffered from discrimination and racism. Thus, the immigrant ancestors built a shelter in order to protect their own race, that is the nowadays Chinatown. Chinatown inevitably appeared in early literary works as an important theme. Seen as small China, a lot of traditional customs and habits were preserved as before. For example, in Disappearing Moon Cafe, family members still keep the family appellation in Chinese, to be precise, the Cantonese. Poh Poh and Gong Gong are the Chinese term for maternal grandmother and maternal grandfather whereas Ngen Ngen and Lo Yeh mean paternal grandmother and paternal grandfather respectively. A Quen and A Queu-Mu equal to uncle and his wife. There are also some special callings that cannot be explained in English. In terms of architecture style, the biggest restaurant in Chinatown--Disappearing Moon Cafe is decorated in a very Chinese style which consoles homesick Chinese.
The rich dark-blood of the rosewood furniture was enhanced by the tangled emerald-green of the ivy foliage. Cultivated jade trees, with leaves like precious stones, overflowed the dragon pots. On the wall, long silk scrolls of calligraphy sang out to these patrons who could read them. It as a nostalgic replica of an old-fashioned Chinese tea house…(39)
All those decorations are the symbols of prosperity in Chinese culture, which can bring good luck and great fortune to family members and their business.
When it comes to good luck, there is one thing has to be mentioned in Chinese culture, that is, Feng Shui. It is a Chinese metaphysical and quasi-philosophical system that seeks to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment.
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Historically, Feng Shui was widely used to orient buildings—often spiritually significant structures such as tombs, but also dwellings and other structures—in an auspicious manner. It is said that the quality of Feng Shui directly affects people's fortune, health, wealth, family and other issues. Before the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Feng Shui is still popular and used in daily life though the younger generation distained it as a superstitious practice. In the novel, Mui Lan and Fong Mei had a conflict around this issue:
Fong Mei needed more room for the baby’s clothes and things, so she had a dresser moved upstairs from the basement. Mui Lan objected it, mainly out of contrariness, muttering about “wind and water” and whatever village superstitions she could excavate out of memory…
According to the theory of Feng Shui, the basement is regarded as Yin because it is underground and is usually cold, dark and damp. In the Chinese culture, Yin is negative, passive, female principle in nature while its inversed side Yang means positive, active, male principle in nature. Thus, Mui Lan deemed that the dresser movement from the basement would bring misfortune and influence on baby’s growth owing to bringing too much Yin to the room.
Together with Feng Shui, Chinese believe that one’s spirit will survive after death and becomes a ghost. In the traditional Chinese concept, if one cannot bury in his homeland, then as the ghost he is, will haunt in the wild as he is not able to find his home. Thus, it is important to keep remains of all corpses and bury them in one’s hometown. Just as in the novel, one chinaman fumed: “if you capsize and spill your cracked brains, that’s O.K. by us, but if you lose any bones, you’re condemning human spirits to ten thousand years of aimless wandering” (20).
The old Chinese do worship the dead and through thousands of year, some rituals and sayings are come down to descendants. After the death of Chen Gwok Fai, Ting An buried his grandfather himself. Suddenly he felt one connect with his grandfather. “When the wind spoke through the branches of the tall trees, he heard his grandfather whisper through him too. The first calm he had felt since his dying. So it was true. Chinese did say that the dead come back on the third day to say
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good-bye” (138).
When Kea was still a little girl, her nanny told the story of dream ghost to lull her to sleep:
Dream ghosts will come for you though. Especially when little farts like you are busy being naughty, like when they try to keep their tired eyes open instead of shutting them tight! Dream ghosts will creep up from behind, and quicker than a wink, they’ll grab hold of those eyeballs. Once they’ve dug into the fleshy parts, they’ll shake and pound and screech and never let go! That’s what people call a nightmare. People nightmare themselves! However, if you close your eyes peaceably and obediently, then they’ll be able to get in as far as your nose. There they just tickle like ale bubbles (153).
Those ghost images and stories derived from the Chinese traditional culture and spirit beliefs. Together with many other old traditions, some “wired” traditional customs kept on passing on to the next generation from the old generation. For example, Beatrice--Kae’s mother, benevolently asked her daughter to “drink this ginger water. It chases the wind away. You have a lot of wind in your system after birthing a baby” (25). She was also told by her relatives never to drink cold and not to even put hands in cold water while establishing milk for the baby. “In the old days, Chinese women and their babies weren’t allowed to take a bath or leave the house until after the full-month celebrations.” This may sounds odd, but when traces its origin, it makes more sense. Women after delivery and the new born baby are weak and delicate which can easily get sick. In the past, due to the poor living condition it was hard to control water temperature and room temperature, which may lead to headache and illness. Besides, as tap water was not widely spread, people used to take bath and shampoo with water from well or river which may impact on one’s health as there may had bacteria and parasites in the water.
Sky Lee gave us a vivid image of how the traditional customs and ideology were still being used in the early immigrant community and had a great impact on their way of thinking. The early immigrant ancestors were still haunted with a strong
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feeling of nostalgia and a feeling of exclusion of the host culture. Their identity had been clearly showed by their observance of the old customs and their behavior of passing down Chinese heritage to their descendants.
2.1.2 Influenced by Mainstream Canadian Cultures
—Young Generation
If we say that the first or second generation of immigrants who are born in China are affected mainly by the traditional Chinese culture, then their children, known as “tusheng”, who are born and brought up in Canada, are in a different situation. This group is discussed by Wing Chung Ng in his book The Chinese in
Vancouver, 1945-80: The Pursuit of Identity and Power. It is worth noting that the
term tusheng refers to locally born Chinese, so they are not strictly speaking immigrants.
As these tusheng are grown up in Canada, they prefer the Canadian morals and values than the traditional Chinese ones. There is no denying that the youngsters want to be “IN” in all respects. The western education helps them to become Canadianized. They start to simulate the white as much as possible in dress, speech, behavior and lifestyle. In Disappearing Moon Cafe, the young generations of Wong Family don’t like to eat Chinese food but prefer “peanut butter sandwich” “sweet milk pudding” and “coffee”; they drive “Porsche Speedster” and “Buick”. Choy Fuk enjoys a more cocky western style with his clothes style, “sennit straw hats, narrow-shouldered jackets and starched high-collared shirts”.
The heir of the great Disappearing Moon Cafe, different from his parents who love Chinese style,
Liked the more modern counter-and-booth section better. He loved the highly polished chrome and brightly lit glass, the checkerboard titles on the floor, the marble countertop. And except for the customers, his mother and perhaps the cacti, there was nothing Chinese about it (39).
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In contrast, not formally received by the traditional Chinese education, they sometimes cannot understand their parents as well as the so-called fortitude, responsibility, obedience, duty of the family and so on. At first, Kae despised the Chinese customs and ideologies and was reluctant to have any relationship with Chinese. Influenced by Canadian’s misunderstanding and prejudice on Tang people, she didn’t ever go down to Chinatown except for the very occasional family banquet. Even, she expressed her disgust about old men in Chinatown: “I certainly wouldn’t ever let any dirty old man touch me! Those little old men were everywhere in Chinatown, leaning in doorways, sitting at bus stops, squatting on sidewalks”(81). The very thoughts made her creep.
Beatrice has presented fully her characteristics of the Canadian individualism, which emphasizes that individual is unique, special and completely different from all other individuals, and manifests itself in individual initiative, independence and privacy. Beatrice intends to achieve her Canadian identity by leaving Chinatown, disregarding her family’s past and breaking off her relation with Chinese culture. She gets a cheap, ugly apartment in Fairview Heights, which is “a white, working-class neighborhood, as far away from Chinatown as she could manage” (211). Although her attempt to deny everything Chinese and appear a hundred percent Euro-Canadian is in vain, she shows her strong will of independence to make her own decision under the influence of Canadian individualism.
Unlike their parents, who are deeply rooted in their Chinese customs and beliefs, the younger generation is less influenced by the traditional Chinese culture and submerged in the western one. The mainstream society makes them inclined to identify themselves with Canadian ways, and to despite their parents’ native country and culture. They see their family’s past as a source of shame, something to be shed. In order to appear completely white Canadian, they reject or deny everything Chinese. They accept the mainstream idea, thinking that Chinese culture is inferior and they feel ashamed of their parents.
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2.1.3 Collision between the Two Cultures
In the Euro-America dominated society, Chinese culture is marginalized and is considered inferior. Many early immigrants had absolutely no idea how this new land would be like when they stepped into Canada. Inevitably culture shock emerges. For example, Fong Mei was surprised at the ‘ultramodern’ her new family life in Canada. All of those can be traced and be concluded from her first letter to her elder sister: “There is so much to say, but as they say, ‘When there are too many bright flowers, the eye knows not where to look.’ My new life here in Golden Mountains has been very interesting (50)”. However, Fong Mei also felt some kind of discomfort that resulted from culture shocks while being in unfamiliar surroundings and being far away from all relatives. She was unaccustomed and felt shy to hold hands with her husband in front of others, even though it was just a few seconds for taking photos. Just as she said, “we tang people are not flamboyant like that (51).” Fong Mei’s marriage ceremony was a western style, which made her feel more uncomfortable as everyone was full of compliment like she was scrutinized all the more severely instead of being teased by grownups (the traditional customs for wedding).
Roughly, we can conclude that the early immigrants were inclined to believe in the traditional Chinese culture while the younger generations who had the local education tended to prefer the western values. The collision between two cultures is also a collision between different generations. It brings out a generational theme as “native” Chinese values versus new “westernized” value.
For example, Mui Lan of the old generation, believes that tang people is a little lost in this wildness:
Back home in the village, there were at least customs and traditions which held people in check. There is an established way of life, and one hardly ever heard of a girl going astray, or a boy who didn’t at least know his duty. But here, in this wilderness, even tang people lose all sense of right from wrong! (33)
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By dealing the Janet Smith case, Gwei Chang felt that Chinatown gradually lost its rules. In the past, the old guys banded together to survive, they played by the rules and abided by a leader. It was more like an organized mutual aid and support. But now, the young people care only about themselves. They have no respects to the elderly. The individualism may also teach them to be selfness. The youngsters are like wild beasts, they’d eat their own kind for benefits. However, when they found themselves in trouble, they will definitely comeback to Chinatown, trailing white police behind to ransack Chinatown. They don’t care if the Sinophobe police would gladly wipe out the whole fellowship for the folly of one individual. When fighting back of the Janet Smith bill, there were two voices interiorly. One was on behalf of the young generation which was more radical, asking for a protest cloud and clear--a boycott. Meanwhile, it was firmly opposed by the old generation who tended to be more conventional, taking the point that it is too risk and may lead to starving. They thought it would be better not to do anything until the boy arrested. On account of different manners and values made this confrontation even intense.
Meanwhile, the young generations constantly draw close to mainstream culture, taking for granted that Canada was better than China as well as the Canadian culture was superior to the Chinese one. They could not understand the elders and felt ashamed of their parents’ awkward behaviour and detestable customs. For instance, Mui Lan’s loud voice when talking to others nauseated her son. He thought his mother was “like any other village type, she could shriek, cackle, and swear with the best of them” (41). He distained those Chinese, who “in their neighbourly gossip from house to house, across the alley, over blackberry bushes, up to third-floor windows, they didn’t care how salty languages or who overhead them” (41).
It is true that “one generation between mother and daughter, and already how far apart the goals and sentiment” (195). Mother--Fong Mei hated Canada, a country which had done nothing except “disqualify” her. She hated this pious town, which kept her bored and laboring like a poor woman. She hated her marriage and her mother-in-law and longed to leave the country, leave them all and went back home.
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She already planed the further for her children back in China in her mind. However, it must be her unilateral thought. Her daughters, had grown up thoroughly small-town Canadian and they had knew anywhere beyond the quiet street of Vancouver. Just as said:
You can take the girl out of Chinatown, but you can’t the Chinatown out of the girl (196).
Fong Mei does not understand about Beatrice was how fiercely she was to the little circle of local-born friends left to her. They were allies and nursed each other for those times when they ventured out of “their place” and came back fractured. They offered each other protection and their bonds againsted it sinewy and strong. “Together, Beatrice and Keeman could stand firm and keep reaching for validity”(196). However, just because Fong Mei did not understand the strong tie between Beatrice and Keeman, she ultimately made the mistake of understanding it. She had almost succeeded in bullying apart this couple and hurted her daughter’s feeling deeply.
The incomprehension and the breakdown of communication between the old and young generation brought tension to Chinatown. Suzanne as a typical character who torn in a world of these two cultures can be seen as a victim of this tension. As she lived in a family with pure Chinese tradition, she was obliged to follow the Chinese social norms. However, her inside world disdained all of it. So she wore a disguise, behaving as an obedient girl in front of her parent. She could not understand why her mother always asked her to smile in front of uncorrelated people. To her, it was too much like selling her soul. She did not want to become like her mother—dried up and hateful because of the “dumb China rules” (209). However, every time after quarrel with her mother, she immersed herself in the regret of her unfilial manner and expected to be scolded. It is true that regret and shame are represented when the disruption and loss of tradition occurred. The duality of identities made Suzanne a little lost. She hadn’t found the right balance between
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them. It was like two fierce forces that tear her apart. Being confused and lost in the two cultures, her attempts of finding a proper way to deal with her identity crisis failed and ultimately she committed suicide for set herself free from all of it.
To sum it up, when the totally different cultures encountered, culture shocks veritably occurred. The old generation may feel discomfort and blame the youngster are going astray. The generation gap here is also a gap between two cultures which may result from the breakdown of communication. The westernized generation disdains the old-fashioned Chinese tradition and eager to leave the circle but refused by the Canadians for their appearance, feeling frustrated and lost. While the old generation misses so much about hometown and everything in China and desire to plan future for children despite their wills.
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2.2 Gender Identity
Here “gender” corresponds to “Cultural Sex". It means that what causes different perceptions of women and men, femininity and masculinity in society, is not sex (biological) differences but comprehensions within society which do not relate to our bodies. Different cultures characterize masculinity and femininity differently-- what is considered feminine in one culture, during one time period, is considered masculine in another time period or country, or it is not in any way related to masculinity and femininity in that society.
The term Gender highlights the fact that the way society treats men and women, how it perceives masculinity and femininity does not relate to our bodies, but our imaginations. The fact that a woman gives birth to a child does not mean that a woman performs all the chores, visits the doctor with a child and so on. Namely all these activities do not relate to the fact that she has the uterus, but to the idea that these activities are "female". The concept of Gender does not only relate to women and men, but it suggests that feminine and masculine characteristics are attributed to institutions, activities and things.
Individual level of Gender--Gender Identity, is one of the three levels of gender that advocated by Sandra Harding (1989). It is about how we, as human beings create our identities (predominantly male and female). They affect our societal expectations, social norms related to masculinity, femininity and heteronormativity of society, but also our own internalized concepts and assumptions, our own personality, sexuality and sexual preferences, as well as our life strategies. It is actually a sort of permanent negotiation of one´s own position and own concept of oneself, in the environment we move through.
Through the ages, whether it is the East or the West, slavery, feudalism, and the capitalist system; women are constrained by religion, law, morality, culture, and education… Even in an era where Eastern and Western cultures are not integrated, women in all different cultural contexts have the same tacit understanding of gender - women are attached to men. Women have lost all rights and social roles other than
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reproduction. While losing their subjectivity, women have been subjected to oppression at all levels of patriarchy, divine rights and multidimensional oppressions stem from the tradition. It was until the 18th century, along with the rise of the feminist movement, women’s consciousness began to awake and various feminist theories started to emerge in the west.
Lee, as both a descendant of Chinese and a native born Canadian, both cultures have a great impact on her. Then, as a writer of colour, she has always paid a lot focuses on issues of race and gender. According to her, there are not any real differences between the marginalized people of colour community and the marginalized white feminist community. Both communities are searching for their identities while the former one is also battling against racism and the latter one is battling against sexism and homophobia. Worse still, there is one community—the women of colour that needs to battle against all those prejudice and fight for their identity.
Indeed, women of colour have first-hand experience with the complexities of multiple identity oppressions based in race and gender. This experience, in turn, constitutes the multiple identities (hybridity) and broadens the capacity for resistance for raced women. According to Trinh T. Minh-ha, this is very promising—“the notion of nascent, shifting, growing…feminism” (Trinh, 1992, pp.152). “Feminist have insistently pointed out *that+ women are not only oppressed economically, but also culturally and politically, in the very forms of signifying and reasoning. Language is therefore an extremely important site of struggle. Meaning has to retain its complexities, otherwise it will [be] just (dead end as) a pawn in the game of power” (Trinh, 1992, pp.154).
Lee recognized that in her writing, she straddles the shifting locations of being Chinese, Canadian, contemporary, woman, and feminist of colour and so on. Insider and outsider to her own culture, gender, history and so on. “I am able to take risks and transgress the boundaries (of these social construct) each category imposes.”(Lee, 1997, pp.12)
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women. While the protagonists are female, their male family members play secondary or tertiary roles in the narrative. If racism has already caused people of dissatisfaction and disappointment of lives in the Golden Mountain, the dual suppressions on the female tang people made them severer victims. All those female characters are the vivid reflections on conditions of the female of that time. As the setting of the novel is from 19th century to 20th century, the following sections will mainly focus on the analysis of this time period. By comparison of the west and east, it will present the women’s condition and living status while citing from the novel.
2.2.1 Women in Feudal Society
4in China
As is known, China has a long history of more than 5000 years. It was said that since (about) 475BC, the beginning of Warring States, the ancient China gradually evolved to the feudal society until 1840--First Opium War (Britain's invasion of China). From 1840--the beginning of modern history in old China, to 1949—the the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the old China turned into Semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. So basically, before 1949, the old China was immersed in the feudalism ideology. Lee’s novel was mainly set in 19th and 20th century, so the early immigrants were greatly affected by the traditional feudalism ideology. Even though, after 1949 China was no long relates to feudalism, the traditional ideology continued to last.
In feudal society, one of the vital symbols is patriarchy which would be seen as an incomparable right that reflected in the hierarchical feudal society. The enduring patriarchy in the Chinese feudal society for thousands of years lies in two factors: on
4
The “feudal” in China is quite different from which in Europe. From the perspective of state structure, the west implements the enfeoffment system in terms of the relationship between central government and local government, while China implements the centralization system. From the perspective of power structure, the western one is hierarchical, while China is bureaucratic. In medieval Europe, there was a certain degree of personal attachment within the ruling class, and different levels of land ownership had different levels of political privilege. The characteristic of Chinese feudal society bureaucracy is that it is a political power structure composed of full-time officials. Different levels of bureaucracy enjoy different privileges. It effectively maintains the absolute monarchy and centralism. From the perspective of ideology, the west directly used religious rule, while China turned political thoughts into patriarchal laws.
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the one hand, the natural economy under the policy of stressing agriculture and restraining commerce in the traditional feudal society lays a solid economic foundation for the birth and maintenance of patriarchal rights; on the other hand, Confucian rituals, especially those of filial piety, maintained the patriarchal patriotism has provided a extensive spiritual support. What’s more, in the eyes of Confucianism, the patriarchal rights are more powerful than those of the monarchy in this male-dominated society, as the latter is derived from the former.
Another thing that needs to be mentioned is the feudal ethical code, which is the name of all rules in the feudal society in China. Mainly based on the Confucian ideology represented by Confucius and Mencius, it plays a significant role in the traditional feudal society. It can be seen as the social norms, moral standard and rules of conduct for the people. It is the aggregation and representation of rights and obligations. It embodies the status of various social classes in the feudal society and stipulates the rights and obligations of all classes in the feudal society. It has a far-reaching influence on China until it finally became the hindrance for the social development in the beginning of the 20th century.
As every coin has two sides, so does the feudal ethnic code. In the early stage, it had a tremendous role in promoting the country, society, and productivity. It promoted national unification, disseminates cultural knowledge, stabilized social relations, and adjusts interpersonal behavior. However, prosperity always goes with sacrifices. And this time, it was the women. They had a tougher life under this ethical code. They had an inferior status in the family. A typical manifestation of women’s low family status would be women’s footbinding phenomenon, which started to prevail since the Song Dynasty and had lasted about a thousand years until the early 20th century. It was first aimed at men's aesthetic needs and sexual desires, while forcing women to be confined in boudoir and home. Footbinding had limited the mobility of women which turned women into males’ slaves and sex slaves. Some Western scholars believe that footbinding is a political mechanism that reflects and subsides women's social and psychological disadvantages; the footbinding firmly fixes women in specific locations and specific functions.
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In addition, a woman usually had no independent identity. Her status in the society was decided by the male member in her family, and her identity was attached to this male. For instance, when Mui Lan was still in China. Her position in the village was a high status one as her husband oversea prosperity gave her a lot of clout in her community (31). She did not have a complete identity. “She was simply the mother of Gwei Chang’s only son. Stamped on her entry papers: “A merchant’s wife”. A wife in name only, she relied heavily on him for her identity in this land, even though the hard distance remained on her husband’s face” (34).
Women’s obedience and submission to men are codified in old Chinese tradition. The most representative and widespread is the so-called “Three Obediences, Four Virtues, Seven Grounds”. The Three Obediences5 enjoin a woman to obey her father in youth, her husband after marriage and her son when widowed. The Four Virtues6 decree that a woman be chaste, that her conversation be courteous but not gossip, that her deportment be graceful and note extravagant, and her leisure be spent in perfecting needle work rather than outdoor activities . The Seven Grounds7 vests husband to divorce with his wife if she is not filial or has no son, or commits adultery, or tends to be jealous, or has a serious disease, or is gossipy or steals. Those doctrines, by indoctrinating that men are superior to women and women must centre their lives on men, bind up Chinese women so tight.
From generation to generation, the elders pass on the norms of becoming a good woman. Fong Mei’s benevolent sister was a typical Chinese woman. Earnestly enjoined on her younger sister for how to become a good woman, she wrote:
a good wife must be chillingly correct. Even the way you walk must be subdued. Keep your eyes to yourself! It is entirely up to you to beat down even the faintest suspicions of scandal….work at your husband’s
5
see the original text: 妇人有三从之义，无专用之道。故未嫁从父，既嫁从夫，夫死从子。--《仪礼•丧服• 子夏传》
6
see the original text: 九嫔掌妇学之法，以九教御：妇德、妇言、妇容、妇功。-- 《周礼•天宫》
7
see the original text: 妇有七去：不顺父母去、无子去、淫去、妒去、有恶疾去、多言去、窃盗去。不顺 父母去，为其逆德也；无子，为其绝世也；淫，为其乱族也；妒，为其乱家也；有恶疾，为其不可与共粢 盛也；口多言，为其离亲也；盗窃，为其反义也。 妇有三不去：有所取无所归不去；与更三年丧不去；前 贫贱后富贵不去。--《大戴礼记》
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side! Cater to your new parents, Nye Nye and Lo Yeh! When you have sons, cherish them! Your hard work will convince others of your righteousness as a woman. If, however, you’re a no-good wife, even the ancestors will curse you! And future generations will abandon you! (55)
Be stuck in the yoke of the family, a woman served her entire life to her new family and seemed to be abandoned by her maiden family.
A woman, whether married in the next village five li away, or across the ocean ten thousand li away, is just as foreign to her maiden family. This is the way of women. She doesn’t retain ties to her childhood past. Your own mother would be shamed and laughed at if she lifted a finger to care for her own daughter’s children. People would say, ‘what, feeding the children of strangers!’ Our lives belong to strangers. Eventually, we all learn to accept our fates (55).
If a woman was close to her maiden family, there would be blames from husband. Fong Mei’s elder sister was slapped and scolded for going out to visit her maiden family too much, though all she wanted was to gaze at the photographs her litter sister sent back. The scales between rights and obligations are never equal in the traditional patriarchy, especially in small villages. Women were usually brittle. Many chose to commit suicide by jumping into a well when they were abandoned by the new family. In the novel, Mui Lan took advantage of this tradition in order to achieve her seem-crazy plan. She threatened Fong Mei to agree to the plan, or Fong Mei could be divorced and be sent back to her village. Knowing “a spurned daughter-in-law would rather commit suicide than go back to her parents’ home, for all the ten generations of everlasting shame that she would cost her family, in fact her village” (72), Mui Lan made her daughter-in- law no retreat.
As we known, the continuity of the family line is utterly important in the traditional culture. It is also the first cause of a domestic dispute, especially between mother-in- law and daughter-in-law. Fong Mei was in this dilemma as she hadn’t delivered any kids for the Wong Family after five-year marriage. Endless humiliation
